Veneer clippers of various types including shear type, rotary type, etc., have been proposed heretofore to cut a sheet of wood veneer along the direction of its fiber orientation (or the direction corresponding to its lengthwise dimension transverse of the direction in which it is fed into the clipper), for eliminating defective portions such as irregularly-shaped leading and trailing edges, cracks, knot holes and other open defects and/or for cutting veneer sheet into the desired widths.
In a known veneer clipper of the rotary type, there is provided a rotatable roll carrying on its periphery and along its axis an elongated straight cutting knife which is rotated therewith intermittently at controlled timing in connection with the incoming veneer sheet advanced by conveyor into the clipper so that the veneer sheet may be cut at the desired positions.
With such rotary type veneer clipper, the knife carriage roll when rotated to its cutting position tends to bend or bow away from an anvil roll on which the veneer sheet is supported and cut, because of the cutting resistance exerted by the anvil roll against the knife. Such bowing or flexure of the carriage roll causes incomplete cuts. Though this roll flexure can be prevented by making the roll larger in diameter for providing rigidity that is great enough to resist the bowing, the resulting heavy weight will degrade the response of the knife carriage roll to intermittent rotation, thus making it difficult to excute the cutting operation at the desired high speed. Additionally, the use of a carriage roll with a larger diameter, hence with a longer circumferential distance, will inevitably lengthen the minimum veneer cutting width, which means the clipper becomes unable to eliminate a defective portion having a small dimension as measured along the direction in which the veneer sheet is advanced.